maybe your color would look good on me
by Pencilwalla
Summary: after a chance meeting, kotori ropes ryoga into shopping with her. dangership.


Kotori sees the dress in the window, red silk and ribbons, and immediately has to try it on, even though it's on display in store where she can't afford the socks, let alone a nice dress. She goes in and grabs two sizes off the rack, determinedly not looking at the price tag, and head straight for the dressing rooms.

In her haste she doesn't read the sign, the one that says the men's dressing rooms are closed and currently the female ones are coed, and so when she has the dress on and comes out to admire herself in the three way mirror, she slams into Shark.

Shark yelps and jumps back, and she whirls around, trips over the hem of her skirt, and falls right into his arms.

"Shark!"

"You," He replies, and she realizes he probably doesn't know or remember her name.

She pulls away, and staggers backwards – she should have grabbed some heels to wear with this dress – before turning back towards the mirror. She can see Shark's reflection standing awkwardly behind her in a black suit and blood-red tie. Most boys her age look a little silly in formal clothes, like they're pretending to be their fathers, but Shark looks natural. He fiddles with his tie, and she steps to the side so she isn't blocking his view.

"I like your suit," she says.

"That shade of red looks awful on you," he replies, and she opens her mouth to be offended, because who asked him, but then she really looks at herself in the mirror and he's right. It's too bright. Her skin looks odd.

"You should try purple." He continues, and then he seems to realize he's giving her fashion advice and he starts to back away, probably to salvage his manliness. But Kotori has just realized that Shark has good taste, unlike every other boy she knows, and also has come all the way out to this mall instead of the one near where he lives, just like her, to buy nice things, and if she lets him leave she might be shopping alone for the foreseeable future.

"Do you think so? You should come help me pick something out." Kotori frowns at herself in the mirror. "Lavender?"

"Not in a full gown. I was thinking darker. Like…" And he tugs on a lock of his hair.

Kotori nods. "Do you like skinny jeans?"

"Why?"

"There were some great turquoise ones – no don't look at me like that – they would look so good on you. Come on, let me change and I'll show you." Kotori dumps the red dress on the floor of the dressing room and yanks on her shirt and skirt as fast as she can. She's be here before to shop, but always alone and always with an edge of envy at the girls who can buy whatever they want that surround her. The prospect of being with someone else, someone who understands fashion, is so thrilling that she doesn't even care that it's Shark.

To her delight he's changed, too, when she comes out, and he's not wearing the gem-studded jacket and shoes he always wears. He's carrying the suit over his arm awkwardly.

"Turquoise will look weird with my hair." He says, and she shakes her head as she hauls him out of the dressing rooms and towards a cashier – there's no way she can let him leave without buying the suit. "It's like yellow, I can't actually wear it – "

"You can, you just don't know it." She assures him, and he pays for the suit and follows her without complaint out of the store.

They shop all afternoon, until the stores start to close and their arms are weighed down with bags and Shark has bought half her purchases in exchange for her not telling anyone he understood how to dress himself. He's right about her needing purple and she's right about turquoise and they both agree that cropped pants are a terrible idea. They pile everything into his bike – somehow he's offered to drive her home – and Kotori is already planning in her head another shopping trip, and another, and maybe she should take him out for lunch sometime, so he can wear his new jeans without worrying about running into anyone he knows, and before she knows it she is being left on her doorstep with her twenty bags of clothes.

She watches him drive off into the night and wonders if he has a leather jacket. That'll be their next purchase, she decides, and she goes inside to sleep, and dream of blue eyes and silver rings and someone who can calculate sale prices in their head, just like she can.


End file.
